We may have two political wings but inordinate celebration of the individual self is not confined to either; it has become a cultural norm that suggests insecurity beneath exaggerated self-assertion, and not for irrational reasons.

He treats each line as if it were an adventure in self-assertion, accompanying phrases with sign language: at the name of God, he crosses himself; when he talks about being here, he points to the ground.

Litten's carpenter friend Max John Hollingworth, looked up from his spokeshave with perhaps one too many knowing political apercus; and Litten's "weary" catalogue of his father's objections to the new Weimar republic – "To him, it's all atonal music, flat roofs, Bauhaus chairs, the rumba, Otto Dix, negro jazz, Jewish self-assertion" – could have done with the lumps taken out of it.

If the instinct of chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tiger for the ownership and possession of her own person and ofttimes had to suffer pain and lacerations for her virtuous self-assertion.